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Princeton University Orchestra: Concerto Competition Winners
A concert for Daniel Ulmer ’03
- This event has passed.
The Princeton University Orchestra presents one of the most popular programs of its season: a spotlight on concerto repertoire, featuring the student winners of the ensemble’s 2022-23 concerto competition. Hearing student virtuosos being featured as soloists, performing with the support of their friends in the orchestra is always a very moving event—their enthusiasm and skill will thrill and inspire.
Program
W.A. MOZART
Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor K. 491
(Richard Qiu '23 — Piano)
SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Ballade for Orchestra Op. 33
GEORGE GERSHWIN
A Cuban Overture
(Adrian Rogers '23 — Conductor)
In Memory Of Daniel Maurice Ulmer ’03
Tonight’s concert is dedicated in memory of Daniel Maurice Ulmer ’03, who was a cellist in the Princeton University Orchestra (1999-2003). Daniel was 38 years old when he passed away peacefully on January 22, 2020, in Ottawa after a courageous battle with cancer. He is survived by his wife, Claudia Lucia; daughter, Danna; parents, Robert and Su-Yung Ulmer; and brother, Julian ’07.
Music was such an important part of what made Daniel the person he was. He studied piano from a young age. By the time he was nine, Daniel had also picked up the cello, and his music theory teacher gave him assignments in writing simple melodies. All of this was very natural – along with his extraordinary talent for languages (English, French, Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish).
In high school in Tokyo, Daniel joined the orchestra. The conductor also started a jazz band for students, which was the beginning of Daniel’s interest in jazz. While attending Interlochen music camp in Michigan the summer before his freshman year at Princeton, he played jazz piano with the band – a side hobby to his cello playing.
While in high school, along with his passion for music, he developed a strong interest in astrophysics. During his first semester at Princeton, Daniel met with his advisor to discuss his intended major. The advisor asked him what he was doing with the rest of his time outside of class. When Daniel answered that he was doing debate and playing in the Orchestra, the advisor told him that if he wanted to study astrophysics at Princeton, he could not do anything outside of his classes. That was enough for Daniel to switch his major to philosophy.
After graduating from Princeton, Daniel earned his J.D. at Columbia Law School and pursued his passion for international justice and human rights. In 2007, he joined the Canadian government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, serving as the lead policy officer for the U.N. Human Rights Council. Daniel later joined the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where he provided legal and policy analysis. During his time at The Hague, Daniel met the love of his life, Claudia Lucia Lopez. They married in 2017 after Daniel returned to Ottawa to continue his service in the Canadian government.
Throughout Daniel’s post-Princeton career, the camaraderie and lifelong bonds cultivated in the halls of Richardson stayed strong. It is for these friendships that tonight’s concert is dedicated to Daniel’s memory.
PROGRAM NOTES
A NOTE FROM RICHARD QIU ’23
ON MOZART- PIANO CONCERTO IN C MINOR K.488
Welcome to the first piano concerto I have ever performed with an orchestra in my 17 years of piano performance! This experience couldn’t have been any better than playing one of the most exquisite and tragic piano works, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor. Selecting this piece and going against my “cool opinion” of initially not liking Mozart changed me and my piano skills for the better to love the pureness and emotional perfection of Mozart’s writing. The first movement contains unusually chromatic sections, tragic piano melodies that portray someone yearning for hope and love but held back by constant fear, rejection, and confusion
(story of my love life, haha), and an intertwining of the beautiful sunshine moments that are overshadowed by the somber cloudiness that eventually ends in a whisper of darkness. The second movement brings light to the truly magical moments and a feeling of home and comfort, with the occasional doubts and evils knocking in, similar to the Princeton construction disturbing your peaceful sleep. The third movement really brings the drama, with an expertly written theme-and-variations, more tragic solos, and beautiful moments, all ending to an explosive finish, like my dreams of changing the world when I “sold out.” Just kidding, I still
have music!
This piece represents so well the extreme ups and many downs of my time at Princeton, and the many events I’ve experienced, even in the past two weeks, have shaped this piece’s tragic and beautiful nature and changed my performance nearly every week. To finally get this opportunity and reflect on my time as a Princeton senior through the power of music is genuinely astonishing, and this piece couldn’t have come at a better time for me to perform. Please let the music sink in, rise and fall with the contour of the beautiful lines, and enjoy the beautiful, emotional ride and wonderful sonority of this half-hour long orchestral work! For this
concert to be my second concerto performance of all time in one year is quite insane to me, riding off the wave of the Bach Harpsichord Concerto with Sinfonia last semester, and it has been quite an exhilarating journey. I hope today’s concert allows you to truly appreciate (or begin appreciating!) Mozart, just like I have been for the past year with this piece.
A NOTE FROM MICHAEL PRATT
ON COLERIDGE-TAYLOR – BALLADE FOR ORCHESTRA OP. 33
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born in London in 1875. His mother was English and his father from Sierra Leone; the composer liked to be identified as Anglo-African. His name comes from his mother’s admiration of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The composer took that as a source of inspiration later in his career. When very young, he was encouraged by his grandfather to take up the violin, and such was his gift that he enrolled in the Royal College of Music at age 15. He studied composition there under Charles Villiers Stanford. After his graduation he was appointed Professor at the Crystal Palace School of Music and began conducting the orchestra at the Croyden Conservatoire.
A NOTE FROM ADRIAN ROGERS ’23
ON GERSHWIN – CUBAN OVERTURE
A prodigy through and through, George Gershwin took to music at a young age and almost immediately rose to stardom. Perhaps no composer better understood the growing American urban environment of the 1920s than Gershwin, and his connectivity to that urban consciousness allowed him to explore a wide range of musical styles. While he is perhaps best known for Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris, his contributions to Broadway show-tune writing and the jazz standard repertoire are just as significant. The Cuban Overture brings all the bombast and savvy Gershwin is known for. Inspired by a trip he took to Havana in 1932, Gershwin extracts musical styles he heard in Cuba and cultivated them in an orchestral setting. Too add to this effect, Gershwin orchestrates the piece to feature a diverse percussion section which contains several Cuban instruments. Claves, maracas, and bongos are all given a spotlight, and their inclusion adds an energized texture to the entire work. However it’s not just instrumental allusions to Cuban music that warrant the piece’s title. Rhythm is baked into the very foundation of the price, and where Gershwin usually drew upon jazz and blues styles for inspiration, a fervid samba takes center stage.
Taylor’s reputation as a conductor and composer began to grow, and he was noticed by Sir Edward Elgar. Elgar arranged an appearance for Taylor at the Three Choirs Festival, where he presented tonight’s work, the Ballade for Orchestra in A minor. It made a strong impression, and in 1899, his old composition teacher Stanford conducted the first installment of Taylor’s Longfellow Hiawatha trilogy for large orchestra, chorus and soloists. This led quickly to the completion of the trilogy and an invitation to tour the United States. In all, Taylor toured the United States three times: 1904, 1906, and 1910. His success was notable. White New York orchestral musicians referred to him admiringly as the “Black Mahler” and he was invited to the White House to visit President Theodore Roosevelt—a rare event for someone of African heritage. His Hiawatha cantatas became a mainstay in the first years of the BBC Proms. Alas, Taylor never realized the financial rewards from Hiawatha that should have been his, as he sold the performance rights to help solve his immediate financial stress. Later he became more savvy about protecting his rights, but it was too late for Hiawatha. He died poor at age 37 of pneumonia. Tonight’s work, Ballade, is a short but dramatic essay, with a taut, fierce allegro section alternating with a lyrical interlude, full of ravishing moments. This was just his start, and makes one sadly wonder where he would have gone as a composer with more years of work and growth.
ABOUT
RICHARD QIU ’23, from Newbury Park, CA, is a senior at Princeton University from the great class of 2023, majoring in economics with certificates in Music Performance for piano, Statistics and Machine Learning, and Technology and Society. He has found an interest in tech, operations, and aviation (progress since the Sinfonia concert!) and will try to work with that in consulting post-graduation (uh oh). Richard has 17 years of piano performance experience behind him, with much of his time spent at the Colburn School of Performing Arts under Jeffrey Lavner before being taught now by Dr. Peggy Kampmeier at Princeton. Richard has participated in masterclasses for piano performance with Jean Yves-Thibaudet, José Ramos Santana, Fabio Bidini, and Ory Shihor. He is a three-time Merit winner for the National Youngarts Foundation competition and has won multiple International Liszt Competition awards and Southern California Junior Bach Festivals. On campus, Richard is heavily involved in keyboard performance, including harpsichord continuo with Early Music at Princeton (EMP), chamber music with Opus, and piano arrangements with Princeton’s Pianists Ensemble (PPE). Unfortunately, this means “free time” isn’t in his vocabulary. Richard also studies harpsichord with Professor Wendy Young. Tonight’s performance is extra special to Richard, as it is his first piano concerto soloist opportunity with an orchestra! Huge thanks to Maestro Pratt and Dr. Kampmeier for their support and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to perform with a supportive group of awesome student musicians.
ADRIAN ROGERS ’23 is a senior at Princeton University majoring in economics with certificates in Music Performance (violin and conducting), Architecture and Engineering, and History and the Practice of Diplomacy. Hailing from New York City, he has almost 20 years of classical music experience spread throughout studies in piano, violin, viola, and conducting. Recently, Adrian has brought his violin playing into musical ventures outside of the classical sphere, exploring Jazz and Rock as extensions of his more traditional background. Adrian began his conducting journey at age 15 under the tutelage of Michale Repper in the New York Youth Symphony Young Conductors Program, and Nathan Hetherington from the Manhattan School of Music. Since then he has gone on to compete in the International Besançon Competition for Young Conductors, and currently serves as the artistic director of Princeton Camerata, a chamber orchestra dedicated to highlighting underrepresented artistic voices and expanding the 20th century musical canon. Through Camerata, Adrian has been able to explore a wide range of repertoire, programming works by Sibelius, Ginastera, Korngold, Resphigi, Kodaly, Akiho, and several commissions by young composers. Adrian is also a teacher at the Trenton Youth Orchestra, and an avid violinist in the Princeton University Orchestra. He currently studies violin with Anna Lim, and conducting with Michael Pratt as part of the Princeton Music Performance Program.
THE PRINCETON UNIVERSITY ORCHESTRA
First performed in February 1896, with a concert by New York professional musicians. The modern history of PUO begins with the appointment of the orchestra’s present music director, Michael J. Pratt, in 1977. Through the fifties and sixties, the ensemble shrank down to as few as thirty students amid “music-is-better-seen-than-heard” mentalities in music academia, as well as insufficient rehearsal and performance spaces on campus. Following Pratt’s appointment to the orchestra’s podium, this downward trend quickly reversed itself into an upwards explosion. In 1984, the orchestra’s home, Alexander Hall, was renovated from a large auditorium into a professional-grade concert hall. Additionally, unprecedented interest in music performance among students, coupled with growth in the overall undergraduate class size and the development of Princeton’s dedicated extracurricular hours (two hours every weekday during which classes are forbidden from meeting), allowed PUO to quickly expand into the large symphonic orchestra of over 100 students that it remains today. In response to students in the orchestra expressing a desire to continue as musicians after their studies at Princeton, Michael Pratt established the Music Department’s Certificate Program in Music Performance in 1990, and he was a major architect in the general integration of performance into Princeton’s wider curriculum. Undergraduate musicians in the Music Performance certificate receive complementary lessons and are eligible to spend a semester abroad studying at the Royal College of Music, which has been named one of the top music conservatories in the world. Following the creation of a strong music performance program, the conductor noted a significant upswing in Princeton University applicants with exceptional musical talent and interest, which in turn allowed the Princeton University Orchestra to grow into an even stronger ensemble, able to tackle any piece in the classical repertoire. In 2018, there were enough applicants to the incoming class alone to fill multiple large symphonic orchestras. Nowadays, the orchestra is recognized for its musical excellence, named in an independent survey as one of the top ten college-age orchestras in the United States.
MICHAEL PRATT
The 2022 – 2023 season marks 45 years since Michael Pratt came to Princeton to conduct the Princeton University Orchestra — a relationship that has resulted in the ensemble’s reputation as one of the finest university orchestras in the United States. He is credited by his colleagues and generations of students as being the architect of one of the finest music programs in the country, Princeton’s certificate Program in Music Performance. Pratt has served as its director since its inception in 1991. The international reputation the Program has earned has resulted in Princeton’s becoming a major destination for talented and academically gifted students. Pratt also established a partnership between Princeton and the Royal College of Music that every year sends Princeton students to study in London. He is also co-founder of the Richardson Chamber Players, which affords opportunities for top students to perform with the performance faculty in chamber music concerts. Over the years, Pratt has guided many generations of Princeton students through a remarkable variety of orchestral and operatic literature, from early Baroque Italian opera through symphonies of Mahler to the latest compositions by students and faculty. He has led the Princeton University Orchestra on eleven European tours. Under Pratt, PUO has also participated in major campus collaborations with the Theater and Dance programs in such works as the premieres of Prokofiev’s Le Pas d’Acier and Boris Godunov, a revival of Richard Strauss’s setting of the Molière classic, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, and a full production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with all of Mendelssohn’s incidental music. Pratt was educated at the Eastman School of Music and Tanglewood, and his teachers and mentors have included Gunther Schuller, Gustav Meier, Leonard Bernstein and Otto Werner Mueller. In March 2018 Michael Pratt was awarded an honorary membership to the Royal College of Music, London (HonRCM) by the future King Charles III, then HRH The Prince of Wales. At Commencement 2019 he was given the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching by Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber.
Featuring
Michael Pratt, Conductor
In Memory Of Daniel Maurice Ulmer ’03
Tonight’s concert is dedicated in memory of Daniel Maurice Ulmer ’03, who was a cellist in the Princeton University Orchestra (1999-2003). Daniel was 38 years old when he passed away peacefully on January 22, 2020, in Ottawa after a courageous battle with cancer. He is survived by his wife, Claudia Lucia; daughter, Danna; parents, Robert and Su-Yung Ulmer; and brother, Julian ’07.
Music was such an important part of what made Daniel the person he was. He studied piano from a young age. By the time he was nine, Daniel had also picked up the cello, and his music theory teacher gave him assignments in writing simple melodies. All of this was very natural – along with his extraordinary talent for languages (English, French, Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish).
In high school in Tokyo, Daniel joined the orchestra. The conductor also started a jazz band for students, which was the beginning of Daniel’s interest in jazz. While attending Interlochen music camp in Michigan the summer before his freshman year at Princeton, he played jazz piano with the band – a side hobby to his cello playing.
While in high school, along with his passion for music, he developed a strong interest in astrophysics. During his first semester at Princeton, Daniel met with his advisor to discuss his intended major. The advisor asked him what he was doing with the rest of his time outside of class. When Daniel answered that he was doing debate and playing in the Orchestra, the advisor told him that if he wanted to study astrophysics at Princeton, he could not do anything outside of his classes. That was enough for Daniel to switch his major to philosophy.
After graduating from Princeton, Daniel earned his J.D. at Columbia Law School and pursued his passion for international justice and human rights. In 2007, he joined the Canadian government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, serving as the lead policy officer for the U.N. Human Rights Council. Daniel later joined the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where he provided legal and policy analysis. During his time at The Hague, Daniel met the love of his life, Claudia Lucia Lopez. They married in 2017 after Daniel returned to Ottawa to continue his service in the Canadian government.
Throughout Daniel’s post-Princeton career, the camaraderie and lifelong bonds cultivated in the halls of Richardson stayed strong. It is for these friendships that tonight’s concert is dedicated to Daniel’s memory.
PROGRAM NOTES
A NOTE FROM RICHARD QIU ’23
ON MOZART- PIANO CONCERTO IN C MINOR K.488
Welcome to the first piano concerto I have ever performed with an orchestra in my 17 years of piano performance! This experience couldn’t have been any better than playing one of the most exquisite and tragic piano works, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor. Selecting this piece and going against my “cool opinion” of initially not liking Mozart changed me and my piano skills for the better to love the pureness and emotional perfection of Mozart’s writing. The first movement contains unusually chromatic sections, tragic piano melodies that portray someone yearning for hope and love but held back by constant fear, rejection, and confusion
(story of my love life, haha), and an intertwining of the beautiful sunshine moments that are overshadowed by the somber cloudiness that eventually ends in a whisper of darkness. The second movement brings light to the truly magical moments and a feeling of home and comfort, with the occasional doubts and evils knocking in, similar to the Princeton construction disturbing your peaceful sleep. The third movement really brings the drama, with an expertly written theme-and-variations, more tragic solos, and beautiful moments, all ending to an explosive finish, like my dreams of changing the world when I “sold out.” Just kidding, I still
have music!
This piece represents so well the extreme ups and many downs of my time at Princeton, and the many events I’ve experienced, even in the past two weeks, have shaped this piece’s tragic and beautiful nature and changed my performance nearly every week. To finally get this opportunity and reflect on my time as a Princeton senior through the power of music is genuinely astonishing, and this piece couldn’t have come at a better time for me to perform. Please let the music sink in, rise and fall with the contour of the beautiful lines, and enjoy the beautiful, emotional ride and wonderful sonority of this half-hour long orchestral work! For this
concert to be my second concerto performance of all time in one year is quite insane to me, riding off the wave of the Bach Harpsichord Concerto with Sinfonia last semester, and it has been quite an exhilarating journey. I hope today’s concert allows you to truly appreciate (or begin appreciating!) Mozart, just like I have been for the past year with this piece.
A NOTE FROM MICHAEL PRATT
ON COLERIDGE-TAYLOR – BALLADE FOR ORCHESTRA OP. 33
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born in London in 1875. His mother was English and his father from Sierra Leone; the composer liked to be identified as Anglo-African. His name comes from his mother’s admiration of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The composer took that as a source of inspiration later in his career. When very young, he was encouraged by his grandfather to take up the violin, and such was his gift that he enrolled in the Royal College of Music at age 15. He studied composition there under Charles Villiers Stanford. After his graduation he was appointed Professor at the Crystal Palace School of Music and began conducting the orchestra at the Croyden Conservatoire.
A NOTE FROM ADRIAN ROGERS ’23
ON GERSHWIN – CUBAN OVERTURE
A prodigy through and through, George Gershwin took to music at a young age and almost immediately rose to stardom. Perhaps no composer better understood the growing American urban environment of the 1920s than Gershwin, and his connectivity to that urban consciousness allowed him to explore a wide range of musical styles. While he is perhaps best known for Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris, his contributions to Broadway show-tune writing and the jazz standard repertoire are just as significant. The Cuban Overture brings all the bombast and savvy Gershwin is known for. Inspired by a trip he took to Havana in 1932, Gershwin extracts musical styles he heard in Cuba and cultivated them in an orchestral setting. Too add to this effect, Gershwin orchestrates the piece to feature a diverse percussion section which contains several Cuban instruments. Claves, maracas, and bongos are all given a spotlight, and their inclusion adds an energized texture to the entire work. However it’s not just instrumental allusions to Cuban music that warrant the piece’s title. Rhythm is baked into the very foundation of the price, and where Gershwin usually drew upon jazz and blues styles for inspiration, a fervid samba takes center stage.
Taylor’s reputation as a conductor and composer began to grow, and he was noticed by Sir Edward Elgar. Elgar arranged an appearance for Taylor at the Three Choirs Festival, where he presented tonight’s work, the Ballade for Orchestra in A minor. It made a strong impression, and in 1899, his old composition teacher Stanford conducted the first installment of Taylor’s Longfellow Hiawatha trilogy for large orchestra, chorus and soloists. This led quickly to the completion of the trilogy and an invitation to tour the United States. In all, Taylor toured the United States three times: 1904, 1906, and 1910. His success was notable. White New York orchestral musicians referred to him admiringly as the “Black Mahler” and he was invited to the White House to visit President Theodore Roosevelt—a rare event for someone of African heritage. His Hiawatha cantatas became a mainstay in the first years of the BBC Proms. Alas, Taylor never realized the financial rewards from Hiawatha that should have been his, as he sold the performance rights to help solve his immediate financial stress. Later he became more savvy about protecting his rights, but it was too late for Hiawatha. He died poor at age 37 of pneumonia. Tonight’s work, Ballade, is a short but dramatic essay, with a taut, fierce allegro section alternating with a lyrical interlude, full of ravishing moments. This was just his start, and makes one sadly wonder where he would have gone as a composer with more years of work and growth.
ABOUT
RICHARD QIU ’23, from Newbury Park, CA, is a senior at Princeton University from the great class of 2023, majoring in economics with certificates in Music Performance for piano, Statistics and Machine Learning, and Technology and Society. He has found an interest in tech, operations, and aviation (progress since the Sinfonia concert!) and will try to work with that in consulting post-graduation (uh oh). Richard has 17 years of piano performance experience behind him, with much of his time spent at the Colburn School of Performing Arts under Jeffrey Lavner before being taught now by Dr. Peggy Kampmeier at Princeton. Richard has participated in masterclasses for piano performance with Jean Yves-Thibaudet, José Ramos Santana, Fabio Bidini, and Ory Shihor. He is a three-time Merit winner for the National Youngarts Foundation competition and has won multiple International Liszt Competition awards and Southern California Junior Bach Festivals. On campus, Richard is heavily involved in keyboard performance, including harpsichord continuo with Early Music at Princeton (EMP), chamber music with Opus, and piano arrangements with Princeton’s Pianists Ensemble (PPE). Unfortunately, this means “free time” isn’t in his vocabulary. Richard also studies harpsichord with Professor Wendy Young. Tonight’s performance is extra special to Richard, as it is his first piano concerto soloist opportunity with an orchestra! Huge thanks to Maestro Pratt and Dr. Kampmeier for their support and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to perform with a supportive group of awesome student musicians.
ADRIAN ROGERS ’23 is a senior at Princeton University majoring in economics with certificates in Music Performance (violin and conducting), Architecture and Engineering, and History and the Practice of Diplomacy. Hailing from New York City, he has almost 20 years of classical music experience spread throughout studies in piano, violin, viola, and conducting. Recently, Adrian has brought his violin playing into musical ventures outside of the classical sphere, exploring Jazz and Rock as extensions of his more traditional background. Adrian began his conducting journey at age 15 under the tutelage of Michale Repper in the New York Youth Symphony Young Conductors Program, and Nathan Hetherington from the Manhattan School of Music. Since then he has gone on to compete in the International Besançon Competition for Young Conductors, and currently serves as the artistic director of Princeton Camerata, a chamber orchestra dedicated to highlighting underrepresented artistic voices and expanding the 20th century musical canon. Through Camerata, Adrian has been able to explore a wide range of repertoire, programming works by Sibelius, Ginastera, Korngold, Resphigi, Kodaly, Akiho, and several commissions by young composers. Adrian is also a teacher at the Trenton Youth Orchestra, and an avid violinist in the Princeton University Orchestra. He currently studies violin with Anna Lim, and conducting with Michael Pratt as part of the Princeton Music Performance Program.
THE PRINCETON UNIVERSITY ORCHESTRA
First performed in February 1896, with a concert by New York professional musicians. The modern history of PUO begins with the appointment of the orchestra’s present music director, Michael J. Pratt, in 1977. Through the fifties and sixties, the ensemble shrank down to as few as thirty students amid “music-is-better-seen-than-heard” mentalities in music academia, as well as insufficient rehearsal and performance spaces on campus. Following Pratt’s appointment to the orchestra’s podium, this downward trend quickly reversed itself into an upwards explosion. In 1984, the orchestra’s home, Alexander Hall, was renovated from a large auditorium into a professional-grade concert hall. Additionally, unprecedented interest in music performance among students, coupled with growth in the overall undergraduate class size and the development of Princeton’s dedicated extracurricular hours (two hours every weekday during which classes are forbidden from meeting), allowed PUO to quickly expand into the large symphonic orchestra of over 100 students that it remains today. In response to students in the orchestra expressing a desire to continue as musicians after their studies at Princeton, Michael Pratt established the Music Department’s Certificate Program in Music Performance in 1990, and he was a major architect in the general integration of performance into Princeton’s wider curriculum. Undergraduate musicians in the Music Performance certificate receive complementary lessons and are eligible to spend a semester abroad studying at the Royal College of Music, which has been named one of the top music conservatories in the world. Following the creation of a strong music performance program, the conductor noted a significant upswing in Princeton University applicants with exceptional musical talent and interest, which in turn allowed the Princeton University Orchestra to grow into an even stronger ensemble, able to tackle any piece in the classical repertoire. In 2018, there were enough applicants to the incoming class alone to fill multiple large symphonic orchestras. Nowadays, the orchestra is recognized for its musical excellence, named in an independent survey as one of the top ten college-age orchestras in the United States.
MICHAEL PRATT
The 2022 – 2023 season marks 45 years since Michael Pratt came to Princeton to conduct the Princeton University Orchestra — a relationship that has resulted in the ensemble’s reputation as one of the finest university orchestras in the United States. He is credited by his colleagues and generations of students as being the architect of one of the finest music programs in the country, Princeton’s certificate Program in Music Performance. Pratt has served as its director since its inception in 1991. The international reputation the Program has earned has resulted in Princeton’s becoming a major destination for talented and academically gifted students. Pratt also established a partnership between Princeton and the Royal College of Music that every year sends Princeton students to study in London. He is also co-founder of the Richardson Chamber Players, which affords opportunities for top students to perform with the performance faculty in chamber music concerts. Over the years, Pratt has guided many generations of Princeton students through a remarkable variety of orchestral and operatic literature, from early Baroque Italian opera through symphonies of Mahler to the latest compositions by students and faculty. He has led the Princeton University Orchestra on eleven European tours. Under Pratt, PUO has also participated in major campus collaborations with the Theater and Dance programs in such works as the premieres of Prokofiev’s Le Pas d’Acier and Boris Godunov, a revival of Richard Strauss’s setting of the Molière classic, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, and a full production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with all of Mendelssohn’s incidental music. Pratt was educated at the Eastman School of Music and Tanglewood, and his teachers and mentors have included Gunther Schuller, Gustav Meier, Leonard Bernstein and Otto Werner Mueller. In March 2018 Michael Pratt was awarded an honorary membership to the Royal College of Music, London (HonRCM) by the future King Charles III, then HRH The Prince of Wales. At Commencement 2019 he was given the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching by Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber.